Calgary International Airport II

[Johnny Aussie]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

I was just about to post that!

Safe to assume that AC had a good inkling that WS was looking at YYZ as one of the LGW flights with the 767's?

Is there any chance Rouge comes into YYC to LGW?

I'm in Singapore at the moment so I have a good time zone advantage

Yeah I guess it was just a matter of time. Largest Canada-UK market. AC isn't going to sit still I guess.

Chance for YYC-LGW on rouge? Yes... likelihood? Getting tougher I don't know how much metal is going to be left.

[Bigtime]

Thanks for the opinion, I'm also thinking AC may be fine leaving YYC to WS for LGW and let them eat Transat's lunch.

[lubicon]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

I was just about to post that!

Safe to assume that AC had a good inkling that WS was looking at YYZ as one of the LGW flights with the 767's?

Is there any chance Rouge comes into YYC to LGW?

Yes, and no. In that order. My opinion only.
Pre-emptive strike against WestJet on the YYZ-LGW route for sure.
0.01% chance they go YYC-LGW unless they cut one of the LHR flights (they re double daily right?)

Nothing says "🞵🞵🞵🞵 you in particular" like launching LGW even after WS tried to get away with it by saying they were eyeing secondary markets.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

(1) Safe to assume that AC had a good inkling that WS was looking at YYZ as one of the LGW flights with the 767's?

(2) Is there any chance Rouge comes into YYC to LGW?

(1) See my quote from earlier in June as to the reason why AC is launching YYZ-LGW service.

(2) No chance that AC would do YYC-LGW service. They will leave that market for WS and Air Transat to fight it out and keep on trucking into LHR.

Speaking of YYC-LON (all London airports) market, WS entrance into YYC-LGW hurts the incumbents in the following descending order: Air Transat, BA, AC. AC is hurt the least as there is all ready price conscious options through Air Transat, so those super cheap pax are not flying AC today, they are flying Air Transat. BA gets hurt more than AC because they are the defacto alternative to AC on the YYC-LHR run. Pax who primarily fly WS as an alternative to AC (e.g. the AC haters and WS Lovers) are flying BA today and will have WS next year.

Originally Posted by Cage

Door is opened by AC for WS widebody to come into YYC and YEG, however attempt to come into YYZ, YUL or YVR and there will be competitive response via AC and ACr.

......

WS gets the T3 satellite terminal if they expand much more at T3. WS widebody together with Encore expansion could seal the deal for T3 satellite. The other option (expensive for a company like WS) is for WS to sign a similar arrangement with GTAA that AC has with WS.

T3 satellite opened last week for exclusive use by WS and WS Encore. If you only follow WS news releases, then you might have missed the announcement which was only broadcast through GTAA sources (demonstrates how much WS loves the satellite). This will enable and additional 5-7 peak period international widebody flights and up to 10 additional nonpeak narrowbody flights to operate from T3. Also it means international airlines based at T3 will not have to push their aircraft to remote stands while on the ground.

Non star alliance airlines at YYZ T1 include the following: Emirates, Etihad Jet Airways, and Sunwing. Only Emirates has to remain in T1 because the 380 cannot be serviced at T3. My guess is that Sunwing would be very happy out of Infield terminal with bus connections to T1. If Sunwing moves to Infield terminal, expect them to pull out of US preclearance arrangement and have all pax cleared at FLL and LAS. This would save Sunwing a good chunk of change because there is a premium for preclearance facilities.

With gates openning up at T3, it would not surprise me to hear that Etihad would move to T3 to allow for AC to expand operations at T1.

[thenoflyzone]

Originally Posted by lubicon

(they re double daily right?)

11x weekly actually. The 763 is only 4 weekly.

Speaking of YYC-LON (all London airports) market, WS entrance into YYC-LGW hurts the incumbents in the following descending order: Air Transat, BA, AC.

TS, or rather Transat Inc., is more than just an airline. They should be fine, even with WS on YYC-LGW. Only 15% of seats on TS are booked "flight only". All the rest book packages. WS can't compete with that across the pond, at least not yet.

Btw, never knew airlines can opt out of US preclearance out of Canadian airports.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by thenoflyzone

TS, or rather Transat Inc., is more than just an airline. They should be fine, even with WS on YYC-LGW. Only 15% of seats on TS are booked "flight only". All the rest book packages. WS can't compete with that across the pond, at least not yet.

Btw, never knew airlines can opt out of US preclearance out of Canadian airports.

Westjet will be heavily relying on Westjet Vacations (largest foreign hotel agent in LAS) when the International widebody operations start. This will compete directly with Transat AT (airline and holidays arms). If WestJet Vacations gets really good selling package tours to europe, their air only option might become a bit high priced. At peak times on YYC-LAS the gambler crowd flies AC rouge rather than WS because WS air only is higher priced. WS jacks up the price on this route so that guests pick up an Air + Hotel package. However the gambler crowd gets better hotel deals booking directly through their favourite casino. WS wants the package tour traveler over the air only traveler because they make money on the hotel commission.

WRT US preclearance, actually it is the other way around as airlines must opt into the program. Airlines sometimes pullout of the program if costs are either too high or if the US CBP is not open at the desired departure time. Also US CBP limits the through put for the airlines, occasionally the airline will pull out of preclearance because they cannot get desirable departure times. Harmony airlines pulled out of the preclearance program for YVR-Hawaii.

[Johnny Aussie]

Originally Posted by Cage

Westjet will be heavily relying on Westjet Vacations (largest foreign hotel agent in LAS) when the International widebody operations start. This will compete directly with Transat AT (airline and holidays arms). If WestJet Vacations gets really good selling package tours to europe, their air only option might become a bit high priced.

Lets also not forget that this route will also depend a lot on what happens on the other side of the Atlantic. 50% of pax on YYC-UK flights originate in the UK. Brand recognition is going to be an issue. Air Transat markets a lot of its UK originating traffic through Canadian Affair which offers so many different types of packages for Brits wanting to experience Canada.

I repeat... Westjet ain't no Wardair. Although the Westjet 763s won't have as many seats as the TS A330s, they are still pretty big planes to fill at over 260 seats.

[Riise]

Originally Posted by Johnny Aussie

Brand recognition is going to be an issue. Air Transat markets a lot of its UK originating traffic through Canadian Affair which offers so many different types of packages for Brits wanting to experience Canada.

Yup, I've seen the Canadian Affair ads on the tube and bus shelters across London.

[Johnny Aussie]

Certainly nice to see a pretty good turnaround after April's downturn

http://www.yyc.com/en-us/media/factsfigures/passengerstatistics.aspx

Overall up 2.6%. YTD up 0.71%
Domestic up 4.8%. YTD up 0.94%
Transborder down 4.6%. YTD down 0.32%
International up 1.1%. YTD up 7.67%

[thenoflyzone]

Originally Posted by Johnny Aussie

Certainly nice to see a pretty good turnaround after April's downturn

http://www.yyc.com/en-us/media/factsfigures/passengerstatistics.aspx

Overall up 2.6%. YTD up 0.71%
Domestic up 4.8%. YTD up 0.94%
Transborder down 4.6%. YTD down 0.32%
International up 1.1%. YTD up 7.67%

Depends how you look at it ! (and it's only fitting that I should say that ! )

Domestic is all that carried the month of May.

Last year, May was one of the strongest months for international growth, whereas this year, YYC had it's worst showing in May (+1%), when every other month was between +8% to 11%.

Plus, Transborder numbers are still bad.

Alberta isn't out of the woods yet. But yes, a positive growth overall is still better than a negative one !

[Cage]

Originally Posted by thenoflyzone

Depends how you look at it ! (and it's only fitting that I should say that ! )

Domestic is all that carried the month of May.

Last year, May was one of the strongest months for international growth, whereas this year, YYC had it's worst showing in May (+1%), when every other month was between +8% to 11%.

Plus, Transborder numbers are still bad.

Alberta isn't out of the woods yet. But yes, a positive growth overall is still better than a negative one !

The more I travel and look at these pax stats the more I think that traffic is all equal and all interrelated. How much difference is YYC-YYZ-LGA Compared to YYC-DEN-EWR? not much however the pax stats would move from one bucket to the next.

All we can say is that overall traffic is up 2.6% yoy.

Also transborder numbers are weak, but they are not bad considering all things economic and currency exchange rate. You want bad, go see YMM.

[Johnny Aussie]

Originally Posted by Cage

The more I travel and look at these pax stats the more I think that traffic is all equal and all interrelated. How much difference is YYC-YYZ-LGA Compared to YYC-DEN-EWR? not much however the pax stats would move from one bucket to the next.

All we can say is that overall traffic is up 2.6% yoy.

Also transborder numbers are weak, but they are not bad considering all things economic and currency exchange rate. You want bad, go see YMM.

Agreed. Growth is growth.

Transborder has taken a hit. The afternoon UA flight to IAH has just been empty lately. From what I have read, heard and observed that route appears to be one of the hardest hit. UA is still cancelling flights out of YEG. With the additional capacity added, but traffic declining, load factors will be significantly down. With peak summer now upon us, I would expect some improvement at least.

I worry about WestJet jumping in on YYC-IAH at the end of summer. Piss poor timing.

[MalcolmTucker]

WestJet will have a hard time if they are counting on origin and destination passengers. Flying from IAH on Air Canada Express in late May, the plane was fully booked but left half empty due to bad weather screwing with connections from the south. UA and AC have the hub thing figured out there.

[holhm22]

Q2 2015 International Terminal update is in: http://www.yyc.com/Portals/0/ADP%20Q2%20Final_reduced.pdf

[Cage]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

WestJet will have a hard time if they are counting on origin and destination passengers. Flying from IAH on Air Canada Express in late May, the plane was fully booked but left half empty due to bad weather screwing with connections from the south. UA and AC have the hub thing figured out there.

UA has been doing a lot of revenue and network management reallignment. This summer season each route from YYC to a UA hub provides connections for a specific region of the USA. Pacific time zone is covered by SFO, DEN covers the rocky mountain and mid continent region (Democratic Party flyover territory), IAH covers Texas and the southern states, ORD covers eastern seaboard, Florida and basically anything east of the Mississippi.

Previously the hubs offered multiple connection points and "competed" with one another based on price. For example last year I flew YYC-SFO-EWR-DCA but also had options through ORD, IAH, and DEN. Today both SFO and IAH are completely invalid routings and cannot be used as connection point, DEN is an expensive connection point ($1,900 round trip all in), ORD is the preferred routing ($850 round trip all in).

The network revenue management is having a dramatic effect on flight each routes traffic. DEN is the preferred connection point for a lot more of the USA because its so expensive to connect through IAH. ORD has 2-3 mainline aircraft per day to handle traffic to eastern USA. IAH however has a lot fewer cheap connection opportunities (both domestic and international) and consequently is a lot less traffic.

[YYCMatt]

Nothing official yet, but heard the first WS 767 is going to be delayed. Now expecting delivery in the 2nd half of July, with service to start around mid August.

[cyeg66]

So, a fourth WS flight is being diverted due to a bomb threat, all in less than a week. Someone is going to land themselves in a shitload of trouble when they get caught. And they will get caught....

[holhm22]

Originally Posted by cyeg66

So, a fourth WS flight is being diverted due to a bomb threat, all in less than a week. Someone is going to land themselves in a shitload of trouble when they get caught. And they will get caught....

Yeah, I saw it on WestJet's fb page right when they told the news. Seriously, this idiot needs to stop. Great job by WS though for helping its passengers and everyone on all these flights.